Status of Policy Issue: Clubroot on the Pest Control Act
Placing clubroot on the Declared Pest list of the Pest Control Act in 2009 had some immediate positive effects. The importance of clubroot as a threat to canola production became more widely known and mitigation efforts were developed and initiated.
However, in the intervening years, troubling aspects of this inclusion have started to appear. The disease seems to have developed a reputation that exceeds even its admittedly serious potential impact – the threat of which gets in the way of appropriate best management practices. The stigma surrounding the disease has led farmers to be afraid to acknowledge or report clubroot-infected fields.
Clubroot is a very costly disease, and we need everyone’s full attention and cooperation to manage it. That is why the stigma associated with reporting clubroot-infested fields must be removed. This way, we can put the full weight of the government and agriculture community behind the actions needed to protect the financial viability of Saskatchewan farms.
Present day, clubroot is now an anomaly in the Pest Control Act. It is clear diseases such as verticillium stripe, sclerotinia, and blackleg do not belong in the Pest Control Act, and for the same reasons, neither does clubroot.
Actions taken:
SaskCanola wrote a letter to the provincial Minister of Agriculture in November 2022 to request that clubroot no longer fall under the Pest Control Act
Looking forward:
The Ministry of Agriculture has examined the implications of clubroot and its status as a declared pest and is proposing to deregulate clubroot as a pest in 2024. Formal consultations will be conducted in the Fall of 2023 with producer groups and industry, including SaskCanola.
Having clubroot fall under the Pest Control Act has served its purpose and it is now time to remove it from the list of pests covered by the act. SaskCanola fully supports the deregulation of clubroot from the Pest Control Act.
It is important to remain vigilant in our biosecurity precautions, but it is time to change our overall approach. Now the focus must be on surveillance, proper crop rotation, and development of canola cultivars resistant to the clubroot pathogen.
Over the years, SaskCanola has invested $2,129,643 levy dollars and leveraged an additional $4,111,525 from other partners to undertake clubroot-related research to counteract this disease and further research is on the horizon.
To review results of clubroot research available to date and for more information about SaskCanola’s free disease testing program, visit SaskCanola.com